


Style Two: The Earth Kingdom

by rewmariewrites



Series: tattoo: the four nations [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoos, Cultural Differences, Cultural References, Earth Kingdom (Avatar), Earth Kingdom Culture, Kinda?, Magical Tattoos, Moving Tattoo(s), POV Toph Beifong, Short, Tattoos, Toph Being Awesome, Unrequited Crush, because the high class earthbenders are too bougie to get actual tattoos, earthbender tattoos are a little more mystical, pro benders have pirate tattoos, pro benders have tattoos but they use needle and ink, toph has a big fat crush on sokka if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-21 00:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16148549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rewmariewrites/pseuds/rewmariewrites
Summary: It starts in her toes, and she thinks she’s hallucinating. But as she practices, as she becomes the first metalbender ever and masters her craft, masters the thing she is creating from scratch, it grows and grows and grows until her fingers and toes and hands and feet and ankles and wrists just like the metal she’s working so hard to understand.





	Style Two: The Earth Kingdom

**Author's Note:**

> author's note: edited 06/03/2019  
> edited for clarity and reworking, but content is largely the same

Toph never really understood the point of Earth Nation tattoos. 

When she was still living with her parents, getting them wasn’t even a question. She knew - theoretically - that the tattoos existed, in the same way that she knew - theoretically - that because she was a bender with a decent grasp of the art she was entitled to them. 

But she also knew that no respectable earthbender had really  _ had _ tattoos for a generation or two, maybe even longer. Not to mention there was no way to hide tattoos from her parents, not while she was also hiding her illicit pro bending. 

After she ran away with Aang, there was just... no point. 

Honestly, she didn’t even realize that  _ other _ nations had tattoos that they still used until Sokka asked her why  _ she _ didn’t have any.

She’s not proud of it now, but back then she had laughed at him. Earthbenders didn’t  _ get _ tattoos anymore, and even if they did, why would she go through pain to get art on her body that she would never be able to see? That was  _ stupid _ . 

And, predictably, Sokka had gotten embarrassed and walked off in a huff, and Toph had laughed. Later, she and Sokka had bonded over their lack of interest in traditional bending tattoos, which had kicked off a deep-set bond between Toph and Sokka that would last  _ years,  _ years that Toph honestly hadn’t expected to be alive for.

(Teaching the Avatar is dangerous stuff, you know.)

So it seemed like she had forgotten all about tattoos and her lack thereof. She didn’t have them and she didn’t care,  _ fight her about it. _

Except... she hadn’t, not really, because she still thought about it a lot. 

Not consciously. Not, like, while she was awake and needing to be  _ Tough Blind Toph _ to teach Aang earthbending. While she was half-asleep, though, lying between Appa’s big paws and letting his big gusting breaths lull her to sleep... she wondered.

One day, in a rare break between (literally) pounding earthbending techniques into Aang’s thick skull, while they were alone, she asked Aang if he knew what Earthbender tattoos looked like. He was quiet for a long, long moment, before answering. 

“I only ever had one friend who had them. His name was Bumi, and I used to slide down the mail chutes with him in Ba Sing Se. His tattoos were like crystals, I think,  growing from his toes towards his knees, and from his fingers towards his elbows, covering his all of his hands and feet. They looked almost  _ real, _ like they should crunch or break or hurt when he moved. I still can’t decide if they  _ were  _ real or not, and he would never tell me. He said - he _ said _ that the tattoos were different for everyone, that sometimes they looked like marble, or clay, or something else. He said that the people who live in the forest look like they’re covered in  _ bark _ . He said that no one gave him the tattoo, not like how Zuko talks about burning ink into the skin or how Katara does it with water. He just practiced and practiced and practiced his bending, and eventually they showed up.”

“That was a hundred years ago.” Toph’s fingers are shaking, a little, and she doesn’t know if she knows why. Doesn’t know if she  _ wants _ to know why. 

(Hadn’t she practiced? Hadn’t she bled, and sweat, and cried? Hadn’t she  _ suffered?  _ Hadn’t she proven  _ mastery _ over her element, so much so that she was the  _ destined teacher _ of the  _ Avatar? _ Why, then,  _ why _ had she been denied this connection to the one thing she  _ loves _ \- )

“Yeah, it  _ was  _ a hundred years ago,” Aang says quietly, sadly, and Toph makes him lift a boulder above his head a thousand times before she lets him stop for the day, as punishment for making her feel an Emotion. 

_ Daysweeksmonthsyears _ later, Toph is kidnapped and put into a metal box, and she bends that metal to escape. 

**(** **_She bends metal._ ** **)**

It takes Toph  _ three weeks _ after she becomes a metalbender to notice the difference.

It starts in her toes, and she thinks she’s hallucinating. But as she practices, as she becomes the  _ first metalbender ever _ and  _ masters _ her craft, masters the thing she is  _ creating _ from  _ scratch _ , it grows and grows and grows until her fingers and toes and hands and feet and ankles and wrists just like the metal she’s working so hard to understand.

And even though she  _ saw _ it, technically, with her bending, she’ll never be able to  _ see _ it. And she wanted to know - she wanted to  _ know _ how it changed her. If it changed her. Would it  _ change  _ her?

(The thing is, Earth citizens always passed as Fire citizens with very little effort. Toph wasn’t ever really concerned about passing as a Firebender - well, not until they actually  _ infiltrated _ the Fire Nation, but even then she wasn’t  _ really _ worried - but she had always taken comfort in the fact that there were people out there who looked like Earth Nation citizens, but were  _ fundamentally _ different. 

It was how  _ she _ had always felt. It was how she had been made to feel by her mother and father, even if they didn’t mean to do it. But now, with her toes and feet and shins and fingers and hands and forearms like this - she still feels different, but it doesn’t have the same burn. She feels grounded. She feels like  _ Earth _ .)

(Sometimes, she doesn’t know if she likes it, being tied to something she has so many conflicted feelings about. Her ties to the Earth Nation have always been something she’s  _ needed, _ something that’s been  _ kept _ from her, something that has empowered her and  _ scared _ her.)

_ “ _W_ ow _ !” Sokka exclaims, when she finally gets him away from Katara and Aang long enough to take off her arm bracers and ask him,  _ 100% casually, _ if he can describe what her arms look like. “It looks kinda like you dipped your arms in metal and then stretched a really thin cloth over it. Like, you know, that headscarf that Katara has? It’s thin like that.”

“No, Sokka, I have never seen that headscarf. I have never seen  _ any _ headscarf, because I  _ cannot _ see.” She tries to make a joke out of it, but she doesn’t know if she really succeeds.

Sokka, though, he understands. He always does. “Oops? I forget sometimes that you can’t see, ‘cause, you know, bending. Um, okay. So. It’s not  _ super _ obvious, but it’s definitely shiny in a way that arms are  _ not  _ supposed to be shiny. It doesn’t look bad, though! It’s super pretty! It’s just like,  _ wow _ , you have _ metal _ underneath your skin. It’s like you’re  _ made _ of metal. Like you’re a  _ Metal Woman! _ ”

Okay, so, maybe Sokka wasn’t the best one to go to for poetic descriptions of her ‘skin in the sunlight’ or whatever. But Toph has never really been a poetic kind of girl, and even though it stings a little, Sokka’s description is enough. 

It’s pretty. It’s shiny. It’s something that others will probably notice in a battle if she doesn’t cover it, because other Earthbenders are  _ stupid _ and only use their  _ eyes _ .

So, she covers it. It feels a little like a betrayal, like she’s denying the connection to her land and her people that she was  _ desperate _ for for so long, but this is  _ war _ . In war, there is no time to be sentimental. 

After the war is done, though, it’s become habit to strap on some arm and leg bracers every morning. For  _ years _ , she forces herself to forget the metal under her skin, locks it away in a box inside her head. Her hands and feet stay free, because she needs them to ‘see’, but Sokka assures her all the time that they barely shine in comparison to the actual metal of her bracers. 

Eventually, he stops talking about it. 

Eventually, Toph wonders if her continual avoidance of her nation’s territory, it’s history, of the way it has marked her as its own, has made whatever powers that gifted her with these ‘tattoos’ take them away. 

She can’t ask anyone else if the metal under her skin is gone without sounding like a lunatic, because no one else knows. Her children definitely won’t tell her, she can’t look herself, Sokka is gone, and she _can’t_ _look herself_ \- 

So, she goes. 

She goes into the forest, disappears, lets the earth take her. She sheds her bracers, rips her pants above the knee and her shirt above the elbow, and runs through the forest until she can’t anymore.

It isn’t until she’s sitting at the base of the heart tree in the Banyan Grove, breathing so hard it feels like her heart is crawling out of her chest, that she ‘looks’. 

And there it is: there is the metal she knows and loves and learned  _ so well  _ that it decided to worm its way under her skin. 

She can’t  _ see _ it, she’ll never be able to  _ see _ it, but when she holds tight to this tree and places her feet firmly in the dirt, when she holds her breath and opens her eyes wide, she can  _ feel _ it.

(And when she  _ feels _ it, a memory rises, unbidden, to the forefront of her mind. It’s Aang, all those years ago, when she was teaching him how to Earthbend. 

_ “Toph,” _ he had whined, “We’ve been training so hard that the dirt won’t even wash off my fingers. They’re so dirty they’re almost  _ black _ , all the way past my second knuckles!”

“Suck it up, buttercup,” she had said on a laugh, “That’s the life of an Earthbender! We live, breathe, and  _ eat _ dirt!”

She wonders now if the dirt had ever washed off, or if the Earth had claimed Aang like it had claimed her.)

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at rewmariewrites.tumblr.com!


End file.
